1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns nanogels encapsulated within a lipid bilayer (lipobeads) and their production.
2. Related Art
Artificial systems consisting of only spherical hydrogel particles or liposomes have already found a variety of biomedical applications in drug delivery, drug targeting, protein separation, enzyme immobilization and so on. Sensory properties of the combined liposome-hydrogel structures may lead to novel biomimetic sensory systems.
Liposomes are phospholipid assemblies consisting of a flexible, cell membrane-like lipid bilayer, the surface of which acts as a permeability barrier. Different compounds can be entrapped in the liposome's aqueous interior. It has been shown that liposomes can be constructed with bilayer permeability responsive to a variety of physical and chemical stimuli, including temperature, light, pH, and ions (See, e.g., G. Gregoriadis et al., Vesicles, Marcel Dekker: New York (1996). This book is incorporated herein by reference.). These liposomes can mimic various functions of biological membranes and can be used as a container for storage, transport, and controllable release of compounds. Liposomes can be mechanically unstable, however and their loading capacity is limited by the water solubility of the material to be loaded.
Hydrogel particles are mechanically more stable than liposomes because of cross-linking and have larger loading capacities than liposomes. Their properties (swelling/de-swelling) can be more sensitive to environmental conditions. It has been reported that some polymer gels can swell or shrink discontinuously and reversibly in response to many different stimuli (temperature, pH, ions, electric fields or light) depending on the chemical composition of the gel/solvent system. The volume change can be as large as a thousand-fold. Macroscopic gels respond to the environmental changes on a rather long-time scale, however. (See, e.g., the article Tanaka et al., J. Chem. Phys., 90: 5161 (1989). This article is incorporated herein by reference.) The Tanaka article showed that for a spherical gel, the time required for swelling or shrinking is proportional to the square of its radius. Therefore, smaller hydrogels should swell/deswell faster. Such smaller hydrogels (e.g., having a diameter on a nanometer scale) should find more potential applications.
Nevertheless, hydrogels lack many useful surface properties of a lipid bilayer. Lipid bilayers stabilized on various supports (glass, plastic, metal, and modified polymer) (See, e.g., the articles: Bayer et al., Biophys. J., 58: 357 (1990); Rothe et al., FEBS. Lett., 263: 308 (1990); Plant, Langmuir, 9: 2764 (1993); Spinke et al., Biophys. J., 63: 1667 (1992). These articles are incorporated herein by reference.) have found a number of applications (See, e.g., the articles: Sackman, Science, 271: 43 (1996); McConnell et al., Biochim. Biophys. Acta, 864: 95 (1986). These articles are incorporated herein by reference.). Bilayer membranes on solid supports are attractive systems mimicking the structural, sensing, and transport roles of biological membranes (See, e.g., the articles: Woodhouse et al., Faraday Discuss, 111: 247 (1998); Wagner et al., Biophys. J., 79: 1400 (2000); Raguse et al., Langmuir, 14: 648 (1998); Cornell et al., Nature, 387: 580 (1997); Kasianowicz et al., Anal. Chem., 73: 2268 (2001). These articles are incorporated herein by reference.), especially sensory systems using ion-channel switches (See, e.g., the articles Raguse et al., Cornell et al., and Kasianowicz et al.). The main drawback of the supported bilayer membranes to date is a lack of well-defined ionic reservoirs on both sides of the membrane.
A functional ionic reservoir between membrane and a substrate can be constructed using an ion sensitive hydrogel. In this context, combination of hydrogel particles with liposomes reconstituted with the membrane protein (ionic channel) can be considered as a model system to study the functions of membranes and membrane proteins and to design new sensory devices. An appropriate assembly of lipid bilayer on a spherical hydrogel surface can be used to prepare an artificial cell analogue. Furthermore, hydrogel-liposome assemblies combine the properties of both classes of materials, which broaden their potentials for biomimetic sensory systems, controlled release devices, and multivalent receptors.
Work on preparing and characterizing submicrometer-scale hydrogel particles has intensified recently, but there are few works devoted to fabricating different combinations of hydrogels and liposomes. A method of fabricating hydrogel spherical particles (beads) within liposomes was reported (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,626,870, hereafter referred to as “the Monshipouri patent”; V. P. Torchilin et al., Macromol. Chem., Rapid Commun. 8: 457 (1987), hereafter referred to as “the Torchilin article”. These works are incorporated herein by reference.). Unfortunately, however, the method discussed in the Monshipouri patent required special hydrogel-forming substances with a gelation initiator for which a liposomal bilayer was permeable. The authors of the Torchilin article prepared LUV liposomes with average diameters of approximately 650 nm using the reverse phase evaporation method. This technique, however, makes it difficult to control liposome size and polydispersity, which is the reason that the Torchilin article presents only average sizes of the particles detected by dynamic light scattering. According to the Torchilin article, the detergent and phospholipid were not removed after solubilizing the lipid bilayer to release the hydrogel particles. Moreover, gels contained in liposomes and gel particles were not distinguished by scanning electron microscopy. Encapsulating hydrogel particles in liposomes was described (See, e.g., the article, Gao, K.; Huang L. Biochim. Biophys. Acta. 897: 377 (1987), hereafter referred to as “the Gao article”. This article is incorporated herein by reference.). Although the overall mechanical strength of the liposomal structure discussed in the Gao article was enhanced in the latter system, the unanchored bilayer was still unstable and needed specific lipid mixtures and polymer cores of certain sizes and shapes. The article by Jin et al. (FEBS Lett. 397: 70 (1996). This article is incorporated herein by reference.) reported the design and preparation of a novel hydrogel-anchored lipid vesicle system, named “lipobeads”. This system contained (i) a hydrogel polymer core anchored by fatty acids, which were covalently attached to the surface of the hydrogel and (ii) a lipid monolayer around the modified hydrogel spherical particle. In this system, the bilayer consisting of hydrophobic chains of fatty acids and hydrophobic tails of the phospholipids, was more stable than that in the system discussed in the Gao article. Spherical anionic microgels (6.5 μm at pH 7.0), composed of methylene-bis-acrylamide and methacrylic acid and loaded with doxorubicin, were coated with a lipid bilayer (See Kiser et al., Nature, 394: 459 (1998). This article is incorporated herein by reference.) to control swelling and release of doxorubicin from the microgels. (See, e.g., the article Yang et al., J. Chromotogr. B. 707: 131 (1998). This article is incorporated herein by reference.) Biotinylated small and large unilamellar liposomes were immobilized in avidin- or streptavidin-derived gel beads for chromatographic analysis. Recently, it was reported that egg phosphatidylcholine liposomes and biomembrane fragments could be immobilized on the surface of poly(acrylamide) macrogel containing hydrophobic anchors, which probably penetrated into the lipid bilayer (See, e.g., the article Yang, et al. Mat. Sci. and Eng. C. 13: 117 (2000)). In all of the above-referenced works (except the Monshipouri patent and the Torchilin article), the sizes of hydrogel particles varied on the micrometer scale. (In these works, optical or electron microscopy was used for characterization.) However, hydrogel particles with nanometer-range diameters would swell and shrink faster in response to environmental conditions because of their smaller radii.
In view of the limits of the state of the art, hydrogel/liposome systems that can respond to changes in the environment on a short time scale are needed.